Six Recent Duke Graduates Selected for International Fellowships

Duke University's Hart Leadership Program has selected its 2005-2006 Hart Fellows.

The fellows are placed with organizations throughout the developing world to conduct research and fieldwork on pressing policy issues. To learn more about the program, visit www.pubpol.duke.edu/hfp.

The six fellows are:

-- Jennifer Hasvold from Rapid City, S.D., who graduated this spring with a political science major and a health policy and chemistry minor. A Robertson Scholar and National Merit Scholar finalist, she has conducted research in Iquitos, Peru, to assess the frequency of midwife usage in the Amazon and volunteered in a clinic targeting underserved residents in and around Quito, Ecuador. A certified EMT-basic care provider in North Carolina, Hasvold participated in a documentary video project for Latina immigrants in Durham and edited documentary footage in international human rights issues for The Empowerment Project in Chapel Hill.

She will work in Battambang, Cambodia, with Homeland, which works to improve the standard of living and well-being of vulnerable children and families. Hasvold's faculty advisor will be Kate Whetten, assistant professor of public policy studies and community and family medicine and director of the Health Inequities Program at Duke.

(Her parents are Mark and Sharon Hasvold.)

-- Lauren Jarvis from Chapel Hill, N.C., who graduated from Duke this spring with a history major. A Benjamin N. Duke Scholar, she conducted an oral history project at the District Six Museum in Cape Town, South Africa. She has also worked with the Southern Oral History Project at the University of North Carolina on a range of issues that includes union membership in North Carolina, black communities in downtown areas destroyed by revitalization efforts and desegregation in Chapel Hill. She has tutored at-risk elementary school children, helped a Liberian family ease its transition to the United States and is the co-creator and editor of "Saturday Night at Duke: Untold Stories of Sexual Assault at Duke."

She will work in Stellenbosch, South Africa, with Women on Farms, a local organization that works to empower women farm workers to improve their living and working conditions and achieve gender equality in the workplace, the home, the farming community and broader society. Her faculty advisor will be Karen Shapiro, visiting assistant professor of history.

(Her mother is Dawn Jarvis.)

-- Hayden Kantor from Pleasantville, N.Y., who graduated from Duke this spring with a political science major and English and history minors. His senior thesis examined the rates of violence against civilians in ethnic civil wars. As an undergraduate, he conducted research at a Liberian refugee camp in Ghana. While studying abroad in New Zealand, he hitchhiked solo across the country. He has interned at New York Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey's office and completed a triathlon and half-marathon.

Kantor will work in Jodhpur, India, with GRAVIS, a local non-governmental organization dedicated to working with the poor to foster rural development. His advisor will be Anirudh Krishna, assistant professor of public policy studies and political science.

(His parents are Dr. Alan and Patricia Kantor.)

-- Michaela Kerrissey from Sherborn, Mass., who graduated from Duke this spring with an English and political science double major. A Robertson Scholar, she conducted a research project in Cape Town, South Africa, on white identity a decade after apartheid. She has also taught English in Pogolotti, Cuba. A Rhodes Scholar finalist, Kerrissey received an Academy of American Poets Award for her poem, "All Beasts," and last spring taught a "Popular Poetics" house course.

She will be working in Kampala, Uganda, with NACWOLA (National Community of Women Living with AIDS), an organization dedicated to helping women with AIDS and their families. Her faculty advisor will be Sherryl Broverman, assistant professor of the practice in biology.

(Her parents are Paul and Dr. Carol Kerrissey)

-- Katherine Wilson-Milne from Needham, Mass., who graduated from Duke this spring with a public policy studies and African American Studies double major and German minor. As an undergraduate, she conducted an anthropological research project in Ghana investigating women's self-perceptions of domestic power dynamics and women's agency in the home environment. She has also lived and worked in Uruguay, Romania and Zimbabwe; interned at the Center for Civil Rights, the Center for Public Integrity and Boston Medical Center; and helped found the Duke chapter of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance. In May, she received The Fleishman Distinguished Scholar Award, which recognizes the graduating major with the highest academic achievement in Public Policy. (She also received a Fulbright, which she declined in lieu of the Hart Fellowship.)

Wilson-Milne will work in Durban, South Africa, with the Legal Resources Centre's Women's Rights Project. Her faculty advisor will be Catherine Admay, visiting lecturer in the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy

(Her parents are Kenneth Milne and Rebecca Wilson.)

-- Mark Younger from Menlo Park, Calif., who graduated from Duke in 2003 with an electrical and computer engineering major and a religion minor. He has conducted service work in Mexico, Peru, Romania and Jamaica, and was active as an undergraduate with the Duke Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Agape Corner, and the Durham Rescue Mission. Since graduation, he has been the director of the DELTA Smart House, a cross-disciplinary initiative at Duke to give practical design experience to undergraduate engineers and educate the public about cutting-edge technologies for the home of the future. In this capacity, he has managed more than 40 engineering students every semester, helped design the smart house architecture and sustained collaborative research partnerships with industry.

He will work in Cotzal, Guatemala, with the AGROS Foundation, which works with rural poor families in developing countries to help them break free from poverty through such initiatives as land acquisition, building village infrastructure, and developing economic capacity. Younger's advisor will be Greg Dees, adjunct professor of social entrepreneurship and nonprofit management at Duke's Fuqua School of Business.

(His parents are William and Lauren Younger.)